


its smooth dark wave

by nasa



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I love tht I can say 'the most established of established relationships' and really mean MOST, M/M, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29071110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasa/pseuds/nasa
Summary: Tonight, when Nicky wakes cold, he wraps the covers around himself and shuffles out to the living room like a mummy. “Is your third espresso coming back to bite you?”Joe pouts at him from the couch. He has a yellowed novel spread open on his lap, the room lit by a single warm lamp. “It was such good coffee,” he says sadly — the same thing he’d said four hours earlier, when he insisted on having an encore to their dessert, because it was just "so good, Nicolo, I haven’t had coffee like this since the 1600s!"-OR: four times joe wanted sleepy cuddles and one time Nicky did
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 17
Kudos: 274
Collections: All and More (18+) Kaysanova Gift Bag 2020





	its smooth dark wave

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [Imoshen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imoshen/pseuds/Imoshen) in the [All_and_More_Gift_Bag_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/All_and_More_Gift_Bag_2020) collection. 



> for the short prompt 'sleepy cuddles'. I hope you enjoy!

At the end of the mission, Nile is dripping blood like a melting popsicle and Andy is cradling her limp wrist in a way that makes Nicky think it’s definitely broken, so Nicky and Joe go out to get the groceries. They don’t have a car here — they’d arrived in Prague by train — so they take a bus to the store. Joe almost drifts off on Nicky’s shoulder, but then a baby at the front of the bus starts crying and it jolts Joe awake. From the way he twitches in his seat, Nicky knows he’s itching to get up and go comfort the child — its mother looks harried and tired herself, the circles under her eyes even deeper than Nicky’s, which Nicky knows is an impressive feat — but it runs the risk of raising the wrong type of attention, and neither of them speak Czech particularly well anyway. Nicky squeezes Joe’s hand in consolidation and Joe squeezes back.

“Ah, Tesco’s,” Joe sighs as they step inside the sliding doors. “How I’ve missed you.”

Nicky rolls his eyes.

“I saw that,” Joe says.

“When will you learn that all grocery stores are the same?” Nicky says, yanking a dirty cart off the rack.

“I am offended by that suggestion,” Joe says cheerily, steering Nicky towards the produce. “After so many decades of my tutelage, I would think you’d have learned by now: there’s nothing better than a bargain, and nobody does a bargain like Tesco’s.”

“Agree to disagree,” Nicky says, but this Tesco’s does have one advantage: it’s huge, set in the bottom floor of a fancy, glass-walled mall, and Nicky suspects it has a small imported food section. “I’ll get the nonperishables?”

“You know how I hate to be parted from you, my heart, but in the interests of expediency, I think that’s wise.” Nicky rolls his eyes again, but he’s smiling when he ducks forward to press a kiss to Joe’s cheek.

Nicky moves quickly through the aisles, their grocery list long-memorized: several loves of bread, a carton of eggs, three bags of Monster Munch (for Andy, who can eat a whole bag in a single sitting.) He picks up a bottle of vodka, remembers they don’t need it anymore, and drops it back off. They have Joe’s favorite gummy worms in the candy aisle, so Nicky grabs a handful. And then, in the back corner of the store, Nicky finds the imports section. There’s not much there — marshmallow fluff, microwave popcorn — but there are a few packs of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups that Nicky remembers Nile devouring when they were in Vancouver a few weeks ago. He clears the shelf.

When he finds Joe again, he’s stocked up on what might be every vegetable under the sun and several shrink-wrapped packs of meat. “They had a lot of it on sale,” Joe explains, dumping his basket into Nicky’s. He’s also holding a plastic bag of custard-filled donuts, which Nicky looks at pointedly. “What?” Joe says. “They’re like twenty cents each!”

Joe eats one on the way out of the mall, fat sugar crystals falling into his beard, but despite the sugar, by the time they get back onto the bus, his eyes are drooping again. Nicky’s not surprised when, two blocks into the bus ride, his head falls heavy on Nicky’s shoulder. A moment later, he’s snoring. Smiling, Nicky glances around the bus — mostly empty, the night falling quick outside the window — and raises an arm to wrap about Joe’s shoulder. A quick cat nap never hurt anyone.

\---

Joe likes to sleep a lot more than Nicky. Or perhaps ‘likes’ is the wrong word - whether or not he likes sleep, he _needs_ a lot more sleep than Nicky, and over the years, that means Nicky has spent many, many hours lying in bed with a sleeping Joe, waking for his love to wake or trying to work out a sneaky way to slip out from under the covers without jostling him.

It’s always notable when Nicky wakes to an empty bed, and it rarely means anything good. But tonight, when Nicky wakes cold, his sheets vacant aside from moonbeams, he’s not surprised. He wraps the covers around himself and shuffles out to the living room like a mummy. “Is your third espresso coming back to bite you?”

Joe pouts at him from the couch. He has a yellowed novel spread open on his lap, the room lit by a single warm lamp. “It was such good coffee,” he says sadly — the same thing he’d said four hours earlier, when he insisted on having an encore to their dessert, because it was just _so good, Nicolo, I haven’t had coffee like this since the 1600s!_

“And now you’re paying the price for it,” Nicky agrees. He drops into Joe’s lap, blanket sleeves flopping over Joe’s shoulders. “Do you need to be tired out?” He rocks his hips against Joe’s.

But Joe’s pout only deepens. “I already tried that,” he confesses. “It didn’t work.”

Nicky suppresses a smile. “Well, it sounds like you’re in a real pickle now, then.”

“Habibi,” Joe whines. “Stop teasing me. If I can’t get to sleep, my whole rhythm’s going to be messed up for weeks. I’m going to be sleeping until noon again. You know I hate to sleep late like that. I never see you.”

Joe seems genuinely upset at the thought, and that frown has Nicky softening. “Very well. I will go make tea. You take this blanket back to bed.”

“I don’t think Nile’s Sleepytime Tea is going to cure this,” Joe says doubtfully, but he does as instructed, only getting mildly derailed by Nicky slapping his ass on the way out the door.

Nicky takes his time boiling the water, steeping his mug and Joe’s. By the time he gets back to their room, Joe already seems more relaxed, sprawled comfortably on the mattress, staring out the window at the glimmering blue ocean, the same dark hue as the night sky. Joe turns as Nicky enters. “It’s beautiful here.”

“Very,” Nicky agrees, passing Joe his mug. “We should come here more often.”

“Should try to find a safehouse,” Joe says. “On the north island, maybe. More isolated. We should take a couple days while we’re here, see if there’s anywhere available that would work.”

Nicky slips under the covers, and Joe slots into place at his side, his leg thrown over Nicky’s. For a few moments they just sit in quiet, enjoying the New Zealand sea breeze, sipping their tea. But eventually, Joe sets his aside, snuggling down into Nicky’s chest, and Nicky takes that as his cue to put away his own mug, threading his hands through Joe’s hair. “What would you like to hear tonight?”

“Surprise me.”

Nicky is in a strange mood tonight - perhaps it’s the full moon - so, after a few moments thought, he starts singing an old Italian song he remembers from his childhood. It’s fractured, some bits incomplete, some bits skipping in a strange way that makes him think he’s forgetting some old verse, but Joe relaxes in his arms anyway, his head heavy against Nicky’s chest. Nicky lets his hand drift down Joe’s back, remembering the game his mother used to play, scratching his back as a child: _and now the farmer plants his seed,_ she had said, and gently pinched his skin in even rows. _And now he tends his crop,_ and she had scratched her nails down along his spine. Nicky’s favorite was always when the rain came: she’d patter her fingers against his back, light but quick, like the littlest drum. It always made Nicky giggle.

Now Nicky traces the knobs of Joe’s spine. "And sleep tonight, my darling," he sings, his voice rasping like candlelight in the darkness. "You are safe and dry. Tomorrow in the morning, I will hold you in the light."

By the end of the second verse, Joe is asleep. Nicky follows not long after.

\---

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Nile asks doubtfully, giving them a once-over. Nicky doesn’t blame her: Joe is practically a corpse in Nicky’s arms he’s so tired, tripping over his own feet every other floorboard.

“I’m sure,” Nicky promises her. “He’s just tired. It was a long stakeout.” He was only supposed to be out there alone for twelve hours before Nicky relieved him, but then Andy had found a time-sensitive lead she wanted to follow, and Nicky couldn’t let her go alone. Joe had said it was fine, but in the end it had been almost thirty-six hours before Booker was able to go take over for him, and a day and a half of staying hyper-aware has Joe dead on his feet.

“I’ll make dinner, okay?” Nile says. “Something you can eat in bed. Does stir fry work?”

“I love you, Nile,” Joe half-slurs from Nicky’s arms. He peeks open one eye from where his face is buried in Nicky’s shoulder. “You’re my favorite.”

Nile rolls her eyes. “Sure, weirdo. Go get a shower, you smell like ass.”

“What ever happened to respecting your elders?” Joe moans, but lets Nicky tug him away to the bathroom.

There’s no bathtub, unfortunately, but Joe probably wouldn’t be able to stay awake long enough for a tub to fill anyway. “Are you going to drown if I put you under the shower head?” Nicky asks, and Joe shakes himself awake enough to stumble into the tiny shower stall.

“Not that far gone yet,” he says, but he fumbles the shampoo bottle. In the end, Nicky takes over, washing his hair and soaping him down from the open shower door, the front of his clothes growing damp with the refracted spray.

Eventually, Nicky deems Joe sufficiently cleaned and helps him stumble out of the shower and dry off. He leans him against the sink so he can stand behind him and comb his hair; they only have one of Booker’s old combs at this safehouse, which isn’t ideal, but Nicky manages.

He’s almost done when he glances up to ask Joe a question and realizes that Joe has somehow managed to fall asleep standing up. His eyes are closed and his head is limp on his neck and he’s making the puffy breathing sounds, like little sighs, that Nicky finds are often the precursors to his snores.

“Yusuf,” he whispers.

Joe doesn’t so much as twitch.

He’s so cute when he’s sleeping.

Grinning, Nicky ducks forward for a brief moment to bury his face in Joe’s hair — his wet, springy curls, now neatly combed from Nicky’s attentions. He presses a quick kiss to the nape of Joe’s neck, and then he leans back and, sparing a brief thought to regret that he’s not strong enough to carry Joe comfortably to bed, shakes his shoulders gently. Joe snorts, jolting up.

“Hey,” Nicky murmurs. “Bedtime.”

“Mmh.” Joe smacks his lips. “Didn’t Nile say - dinner?”

“You can eat in the morning. Unless you want to -“ But Joe is shaking his head, yawning.

“‘m tired. Sleep first.”

Nicky guides him to their room with a hand around his waist. Joe’s eyes fall closed again halfway there. On their bedside table, Nicky finds two bowls of rice and chicken stir fry waiting for them, as well as two glasses of water. A midnight snack, then. Nicky eases Joe down to the mattress carefully, and then, when Joe clings with one hand to Nicky’s shirt front, slides in after him. Joe’s arm heavy around Nicky’s waist, his nose to the back of Nicky’s neck. “Sleep, Yusuf,” Nicky murmurs, and Joe does.

\---

(When Nicky had met Quynh and Andy, one of the first things he’d noticed about them was how they slept curled together, like two cats in a single beam of sunlight. There wasn’t much rhyme or reason to it, except that they were always touching, a hand on a hip, an ankle across a shin, their backs pressed together when they needed to sleep sitting up. “I would hate to lose her in my sleep,” Quynh had joked when Nicky finally worked up the courage to ask — the two of them on a run to gather herbs for a local medicine man in the mountains, Joe and Andy lingering in the valley below. Nicky remembers the sharp curve of her smile, so like Joe’s scimitar.

It was one of the most jarring things, later, seeing Andy sleeping alone. They had gone south for two years — such a brief period to them by that point — and returned north to find everything different. Andy, who had so loved sleep before, barely seemed to have the stomach for it now; she was always awake when Nicky went to bed and already cooking breakfast when he woke, and more than once, Nicky was jolted awake by her thready gasps in the night. Joe had tried to comfort her once — they had caught her in a nightmare — but she had startled awake faster than either of them had expected and gutted Joe for his trouble, and after that, they had always been careful around her.

Perhaps if they were better people — kinder, more generous friends — they would have tried sleeping apart themselves for a time. But neither of them were wiling. The first night after they found Andy, after they had heard what happened to Quynh, they had both waited up until Andy had fallen asleep by the fire. Then Joe had tucked himself up behind Nicolo, and wrapped his arm tight around his waist, and whispered, “Please let me hold you tonight.”

His voice was low and rough, the voice of an old man wearied by life, and Nicky hadn’t argued. He’d merely nodded, placing his hand over Joe’s on his stomach, and paid close attention to the beat of Joe’s heart against his back. Joe requested the same position the next night, and the night after that, and eventually Nicky realized that he liked it as much as Joe did. This way of sleeping had its advantages: in front, he could have his sword at the ready to defend them, he could scan the surrounding areas more easily to search out a threat. He was able to protect Yusuf much better this way — his sleepy, soft Yusuf, who took so long, sometimes, to wake. He deserved to be protected. And, selfishly, Nicky found he loved being held.)

\---

It’s a hundred and five degrees outside, the cicadas are screaming like the world is ending, and Nicky can’t sleep.

He rolls over onto a smooth stretch of sheet, seeing if a change in position will help. No such luck: the sheet, which should be cool, is even warmer than his body and scratches in strange ways against his exposed stomach.

He should be used to this. Almost nine hundred years of living without air conditioning, of sleeping outside in the mugginess of monsoon season and hiking through hours through desert heat — but these last few decades have spoiled him, and now Nicky is lying in bed, wide awake, unable to think about anything but the fact that he isn’t touching Yusuf.

Pathetic.

He’s debating his options - tea? A cold shower? A cold mango? - when Joe rolls over to face him and mumbles, “Nicky?”

“It’s fine,” Nicky whispers. “Go back to sleep.”

But Joe just frowns, eyes still closed, and reaches across the mattress with one hand to grasp for Nicky’s arm. “Where you going?”

“I can’t sleep.”

Joe cracks one eyelid.

“It’s been a while since we’ve slept apart.”

Joe’s eye falls shut again and he sighs, hand falling from Nicky’s arm. “How wide do you think the bed is?”

Which is not what Nicky was expecting he’d say. “What?”

“Lay back.” Nicky does as instructed, though he keeps himself propped on his elbows so he can see what Joe is doing - moving his pillow to the opposite corner of the bed as Nicky’s, then dragging himself down there too, so he lays parallel to the foot of the bed.

“Joe -“ Nicky starts, but then Joe stretches out, his ankles sliding against Nicky’s, and Nicky realizes what he’s done.

“Better?” Joe asks. From the drag of his voice, he’s already falling back asleep; Nicky wants to kiss him, but he’s too far away, so he settles for rubbing his ankle against Joe’s.

“Better,” he agrees, because it is — just to be touching Joe is, apparently, all his body needs. Nicky can already feel the strange tension in his shoulders releasing him. Nicky falls back on the pillows, keeping on eye cracked to watch the way Joe shuffles about on his stomach getting comfortable. In his new spot, he’s lying right in the square of light let in by the window, a strange yellow-green from the streetlights outside. It casts his face in an aquamarine tone. He’s so beautiful.

Nicky falls asleep easily, between one breath and the next.

**Author's Note:**

> is the tesco’s featured in this fic the one I went to when I lived in prague for a semester? cannot confirm. (but also: yes.) the lullaby featured in section 2 is not a real lullaby as far as I know. (and if it was a real italian lullaby, it wouldn’t rhyme in english. try not to think too hard about it.) title from variation on the word sleep by margaret atwood, and the line: “I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head.”
> 
> find me on tumblr as joeandnicky


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